§ 2-200. How to Cite Judicial Opinions

In the U.S. legal system, judicial opinions are probably
the most frequently cited category of legal material. The articulated grounds
of past judicial decisions are, in many instances, binding precedent for currently
litigated matters. Under other circumstances, they are "persuasive"
authority. In either event, if on point, they should be cited. In the context
of legal citation, judicial opinions are commonly referred to as "cases"
and organized collections of opinions are called "law reports" or
"case reports." Most cited "cases" are opinions of appellate
courts; however, trial court rulings on questions of law do on occasion produce
decisions lawyers may wish to cite, despite their limited force as precedent.

Prior to the era of electronic information dissemination,
many courts that produced large numbers of legal opinions selected only a fraction
of them for "publication" in law reports. The remaining "unpublished
cases" were, as a practical matter, unavailable for citation. The appearance
of online systems ready, even eager, to pick up and distribute "unpublished"
decisions forced courts to be clearer about the status of decisions they view
as merely involving the routine application of settled law. See§ 2-250.

Since the decisions of American courts generally deal with
multiple issues and tend to be lengthy, recounting pre-litigation facts and
procedural events of limited relevance to the points for which they might be
cited, it is rarely enough simply to cite the case. Under most circumstances,
a full case citation should include a reference to a specific portion or portions
of the opinion. A reference that merely directs the reader to a decision of
the U.S. Supreme Court and no more has a greater likelihood of frustrating than
persuading. It is analogous to route directions that identify the city or neighborhood
but fail to furnish a complete street address.

The relevant citation principles follow; section 3-200
provides both basic examples and sample case citations from all major U.S. jurisdictions.

If the reference is to a portion of the opinion (as in
most instances it should be), the paragraph number or numbers of that portion
(with a medium-neutral citation) or the page number or numbers of that part
should follow the case retrieval ID or address, set off by a comma. (Citations to one
or more specific point or points in an opinion are commonly referred to as "pinpoint"
or "jump" citations.) «e.g.»

In some situations only one ID or reporter citation is
required. In others, two or more should be provided in "parallel"
 i.e., in succession  separated
by commas «e.g.».

Most courts that have implemented medium-neutral citation
formats call for continued use of print-based case IDs in parallel, when available, although not parallel "pinpoint" pages since the paragraph numbers serve that purpose equally in print «e.g.».

When state cases are cited
to a court in the same state, parallel addresses should be provided
if the case is reported in both an official state reporter and a West regional
reporter  the official reporter address coming first, the regional reporter
address second, the two separated by a comma «e.g.».
Here, too, parallel “pinpoint” pages are generally not necessary since most online systems contain the pagination of both reporters. When cited to courts of another jurisdiction, state decisions that appear in a regional reporter generally need be cited only to that reporter. This can mean that the same decision will, when cited within its state, have a different citation form than when cited in other jurisdictions «e.g.».
¡But see§
2-215(1)!

In any reference where the court is sufficiently identified
by the case ID or reporter  as for example "WI" or "Wis."
 no additional reference is necessary.«E.g.»

The regional reporters covering numerous states and
the reporters containing decisions of the lower federal courts do not sufficiently
identify the court for a particular case. Consequently, that information must
be added. Court identification is placed, in abbreviated form, in the parentheses
containing the year of decision.«E.g.»

The abbreviation for a state standing alone identifies a decision of the jurisdiction's highest appellate court. For that reason no notation
at all is required when the state is indicated in a reporter name. For example,
"(Kan. 1976)" indicates a 1976 decision of the Kansas Supreme Court
while a decision of the Kansas Court of Appeals would be indicated by "(Kan.
Ct. App. 1984)" and a decision of the Kansas Supreme Court cited to the
official reporter would simply show the date. ¡But
see§ 2-215(2)!

Whether to indicate which of several circuits, districts,
divisions or departments of a court rendered a decision depends both on the
court and the context for the citation. Which circuit of the U.S. Courts of
Appeals or which U.S. District Court handed down a decision is always indicated
«e.g.».
With a decision from an intermediate level state court, the information should
be included in any setting where it bears on the citation's authority or is
otherwise important. Thus, in a state where the decisions of one department
or circuit are not binding on another one, citations should identify the unit
that decided a case «e.g.».
When citing the same decision in another state there would be no need to do
so.

§ 2-215. Case Citations  Points
of Difference in Citation Practice

Point 1:
Whether to use parallel case citations and, if not, which citation to use is a subject on which court rules often speak. The practice set out here is consistent with most of them, although a few state rules call for citations of decisions from other jurisdictions to include both an official reporter reference, if any, and a West regional reporter reference. The rules of a few others allow citation to the state’s official reports without a parallel citation to the regional reporter. See§ 7-500.

Point 2:
A number of state courts reject the practice of including "Ct." when abbreviating their intermediate appellate courts. In Alaska, for example, the abbreviation used for the state court of appeals is "Alaska App." rather than "Alaska Ct. App."

Most case citations refer to opinions that have already appeared
in established print reporters and their conformed electronic counterparts.
Opinions for which that is not true either because they are very recent or because
the court or publisher of the relevant reporter did not consider the decision
important enough for such dissemination call for alternative identification.
The challenge in such a situation is to furnish the reader sufficient information
to enable retrieval of the document from one or more specialized sources. (This is one
of the problems addressed by medium-neutral citation systems. See§ 2-230.) The following alternatives
can be used. While they are listed in order of traditional preference, the ultimate
choice should be made in terms of the intended readers' likely access. (Before
citing a decision that is not "published" because of the court's own
judgment about its limited precedential importance, be sure to consult the court's
rules. See§
2-250.)

Alternative
1: With cases available in a print looseleaf service or an electronic equivalent, the minimum ID
or address (following the parties' names (§
2-210(a)) consists of:

a full service citation, the court (abbreviated), and
the full date «e.g.».

Alternative
2: With cases available in electronic format but not yet in final form, the
minimum ID or address (following the parties' names (§
2-210(a)) consists of:

the docket number, a citation to the electronic source
(§ 2-100), the "star"
page number(s) assigned by the source for a pinpoint cite, the court (abbreviated
and only to the extent not communicated by the online citation), and the full
date «e.g.».

Point 1:
Some courts omit the docket number from citations to cases that are in LEXIS or Westlaw. While that saves a modest amount of space, inclusion of the docket number facilitates access to the decision by those using another electronic source, whether it be a competing commercial online system or the court's own Web site «e.g.».

Point 2:
When the decision is certain to appear in an established reporter but has not yet been published, some courts include a skeletal print citation with three underlined spaces taking the place of the missing volume and page numbers. That practice makes sense only when the citing text will, at some later point, be revised to fill in the gaps «e.g.».

In 1996, the American Bar Association approved a resolution
recommending that courts adopt a uniform public domain citation system "equally
effective for printed case reports and for case reports electronically published
on computer disks or network services" and laying out the essential components
of such a medium-neutral system (see§ 1-500). The American Association of Law Libraries
had previously gone on record for "vendor and media neutral" citation
and has since issued a Universal Citation Guide that details an approach consistent
with that urged by the ABA. An increasing number of jurisdictions have adopted
citation schemes embodying some or all of the elements recommended by these
national bodies. North Dakota is representative. Its court rules state in relevant
part:

When available, initial citations must include the volume
and initial page number of the North Western Reporter in which the opinion is
published. The initial citation of any published opinion of the Supreme Court
released on or after January 1, 1997, contained in a brief, memorandum, or other
document filed with any trial or appellate court and the citation in the table
of cases in a brief must also include a reference to the calendar year in which
the decision was filed, followed by the court designation of "ND",
followed by a sequential number assigned by the Clerk of the Supreme Court.
A paragraph citation should be placed immediately following the sequential number
assigned to the case. Subsequent citations within the brief, memorandum or other
document must include the paragraph number and sufficient references to identify
the initial citation.

N.D. R. CT Rule 11.6 (b).

The Rule supplies examples, e.g.:

Smith v. Jones,
1997 ND 15, 600 N.W.2d 900 (fictional).

Smith v. Jones,
1996 ND 15, ¶ 21, 600 N.W.2d 900 (fictional).

For decisions of the North Dakota Court of Appeals, the formula
is the same with the substitution of "ND App" for "ND."
In jurisdictions adopting such a vendor- and medium-neutral citation scheme,
that scheme should be used, together with one or more parallel reporter citations
as may, indeed, be required by court rule or local practice.

While the formats and other details vary slightly, several
other jurisdictions have implemented case citation schemes employing the same
basic structure  case name, year, court, sequential number, and (within
the opinion) paragraph number or numbers. In addition to North Dakota these
include Colorado, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah,
Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In 2009 Arkansas began to designate its appellate
decisions in this way, while retaining page numbers within the court-released
pdf file as the means for pinpoint cites. Four other states, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Ohio, and, most recently, Illinois, have adopted medium-neutral citation systems,
but along the significantly different lines noted below. At the federal level,
the progress has, to date, been minimal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit began to apply medium-neutral citations to its own decisions in 1994,
but it has never directed attorneys to use them or employed them itself in referring
to prior decisions that have appeared in the Federal Reporter series. Among
district courts, the District of South Dakota appears to stand alone. Between 1996 and 2009 some, although not all, of its judges applied paragraph numbers and
case designations in the format "2008 DSD 6" to their decisions and
used the system in citations to them.

Ohio's case numbering approach operates across the entire
state court system rather than court by court, with the result that successive
decisions of the state supreme court may be numbered 3957 and 3995. (These system-wide
numbers are assigned by the state's reporter of decisions.) Illinois, Louisiana,
and Mississippi use the docket number as the case ID rather than generating
a new one based on year and decision sequence. In addition, Louisiana, like Arkansas, uses slip
opinion page numbers rather than paragraph numbers for pinpoint citation. The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit does the same.

The core of a case citation includes at least two items that
communicate by their absence. In other words, a case citation is read with
the expectation that if certain things
have occurred they will be reported as additional elements of a reference.
Citations that are silent on these subjects are taken as representing that those
facts are absent.

A citation consisting only of the core items represents that
a clear holding of a majority of the court stands for the proposition with which
the writer has associated it. It also represents that there have been no legal
proceedings in the case occurring after the cited opinion that affect its authority.
Finally, with a court that releases both "published" and "unpublished"
or "non-precedential" decisions, in the absence of any indication
otherwise, the citation of a decision represents that it has been designated
for publication.

Principle 1:
If the citation is to a dissenting, concurring, or plurality opinion or to dictum,
that fact should be reported in separate parentheses following the date «e.g.».

Principle 2:
If there have been one or more subsequent actions in the case cited, citations
to those actions should be reported following the core items, preceded by an
abbreviation indicating the nature of the action (§
4-200) «e.g.».
However, denials of certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court or of similar discretionary
appeals by other courts need not be reported unless they are recent (within
the past two years) or otherwise noteworthy.

Principle
3: If the deciding court releases both "published" and "unpublished"
or "nonprecedential" decisions and the latter carry less weight, decisions
of that category should have the characterization given them by the court placed
in parentheses following the date «e.g.».
That is unnecessary with U.S. Court of Appeals decisions cited to West's
Federal Appendix Reporter since it contains only "unpublished" decisions.
Before citing an unpublished decision, however, see §
2-250.

Electronic distribution of judicial opinions has given wide
access to decisions that the issuing courts did not view as important or precedential.
A court's withholding of such decisions from print publication once effectively
limited dissemination, but no longer. While §
2-220 outlines the format to use in citing "unpublished" cases,
court rules may well instruct that decisions the court has affirmatively designated
not to be published should not be cited at all (or at least not unless they
bear directly on a subsequent matter as, for example, through res
judicata). This may be true even if a decision has in fact been published
in print. Since 2001, that has been the case with many U.S. Court of Appeals "unpublished"
decisions because of West's Federal Appendix Reporter. Before you
cite a decision that the deciding court has labeled "unpublished"
or "non-precedential," you should consult that court's rules on this
point.